“I have obviously not understood the rules of the Australian championships. I was wearing a unisex suit which does not cover my chest completely so I need to wear an old cut-down suit underneath. I thought it was a modesty suit. It’s just so I don’t fall out the side, to feel more comfortable.”

“She came to Sydney to regroup after a disappointing Olympic campaign, where she was rattled by a zipper malfunction on her hi-tech Speedo suit just moments before the semi-finals of her main event, the 50m freestyle. She failed to reach the final.”

“I would almost claim that’s a bit sexist saying that the men can cover their private parts up with briefs and women can only also wear briefs. I would totally even though I’m Swedish, understand that a modesty suit would be to cover your modest parts. I guess you can’t even wear a modesty suit any more.”

Asked for clarification in the case of Therese Alshammar, of Sweden, Cornel Marculescu, Executive Director of FINA, noted the clarity of FINA approvals guidelines, contained in the Dubai Charter agreed last weekend. Those guidelines state:

h. USE: The swimmer can only wear one swimsuit (FINA Rule GR 5.3).

“That means nothing must be worn underneath. One suit only. That’s it,” said the Director. “We are not having anything that is open to interpretation any more. One suit means one suit.”

A further word from FINA to federations: suit checking should be carried out BEFORE races. Officials must be vigilant, says FINA, and must take out swimmers who arrive at their blocks wearing one suit on top of another, including briefs under a body. NOT allowed, as of March 14.

Warnings were delivered over the public address system in Sheffield both yesterday and today, while coaches were gathered together to reinforce the message to swimmers: one suit only in all cases. Elliot apparently believed that that would not apply to leggings but only full bodysuits.

Paul Hogg, coach to Elliot in Cockermouth explained: “Craig had never swum in leggings before It felt before the race that they [were] rubbing, so he put on … training trunks. I’m not very happy. He should have just swum in trunks. He’s obviously a bit upset and he’ll be swimming in trunks tomorrow.”

I think the point of the modesty suit was to keep the athlete modest while putting on the suit not while wearing it. These things can be really difficult to get into (I’ve heard for some of the neck to ankle suits, it can take 30 minutes to get into). I think some athletes are uncomfortable being semi-nude for the time it takes to get them on or struggling with a towel or something else to protect them.

“There are a lot of spin off effects on the suit issue. Developing talent is one of them. Part of the issue is if you are trying to ID talent, in the past you would look at performance and time but now we don’t know what they were wearing. And since it makes a dramatic difference, what they were wearing, how you develop your time standards for age-group ranks and make talent ID and selection … well, there’s a lot of ramifications to suit issue that aren’t even been talked about in the discussion on suits.”

“It’s an issue right now. I really want to be clear that I think FINA is doing about as good a job as it can do in addressing this issue. I think it will be two or three years before we are where I would like to see us be. I hope that happens but I think it is moving in that direction. I certainly understand that its a complicated issue and that we can’t have a solution in one meet or one week. It is not going to be where I would like to see it in Rome, certainly. Probably not in 2010 either. But hoping that by the time the Games come round in 2012 we will be in the kind of situation that we would all like to see.”